A brief but heavy rain exposes poor sewerage and inefficiency of govt authorities.
PESHAWAR - People immensely enjoyed the rain shower that turned the weather pleasant amid the heat wave but they equally suffered due to the poor sewerage system as the shower also turned the roads into streams in the provincial capital and thus exposed the inefficiency of the government authorities.
Floods submerged almost all roads including University Road, Warsak Road, Charsadda Road, Saddar and city roads while the BRT operations were suspended as its stations, particularly, the underground sections, required boats instead of buses on the floodwater. Not only in the city, the roads outside the Chief Minister House and Governor House were also flooded.
The Karkhanu Market, which is a major trade centre, remained submerged in water, with the traders criticising the government authorities for failing to improve the drainage of the city despite receiving huge sums of money as taxes from the traders. The road outside the KP Assembly premises also presented the views of a pond, obstructing vehicular traffic, while several motorists were found fixing their vehicles that had stopped and developed faults on the flooded roads. The traffic police not only tried to manage the road traffic but they were also having an additional duty of pushing the faulty vehicles to roadsides all the day.
While the provincial government of the past, led by the then chief minister Pervez Khattak – who is known for his experience construction and contract projects – was more interested in BRT, and they paid very little attention to the city’s drainage system. The money, spent on BRT, would certainly have solved all the drainage problems and might also have done some other good to the provincial metropolitan.
The incumbent provincial government has approved a plan to construct a new city in Peshawar – a project that Peshawar needed since decades as its population has increased so much that the congested areas are not more livable due to pollution and a higher population rate.
Another problem with BRT in rains is that on the one hand, it gets flooded and on the other, when water is flushed out of it, the road outside the BRT corridor gets flooded because there is no proper sewerage. A spokesperson for TransPeshawar said that work was in progress to flush out water through pumping machines.
The recent rains prompted many to question the KP government and PTI chairman Imran Khan, who have criticised the Karachi administration over floods. Some Peshawarites questioned if Peshawar had become another Karachi?
